HazelnutWell gosh Bern, if you don't like Trump why did you work so hard to get him elected?

I kid, I kid.

I mean it WAS an incredibly close election, and he WOULD have lost if you hadn't fought with Hillary long after it was mathematically possible and even refused to concede after she had the majority of electors in hopes of holding the country's future hostage to getting some of the party platform reworded to flatter you, but HEY.

It was totally worth it, right? President Donald Trump. The degradation and disintegration of American democracy. The drastically increased odds of a major war or even general collapse of the world order in our lifetimes? Your ego and sense of ideological purity is totally worth it.

But no, I'm kidding. Congratulations. Well done. Good on you Bernie. How great and principled you are. You really showed them. So righteous, so pure. The world is such a better place from the decisions you made. I'm so glad to live in the 2017 America that you helped bring about.

Seriously though, Bernie had something to offer the Midwestern swing voters who actually decided the election.

Also, it helps that HRC didn't Publicly act undecided about TPP to voters, while Privately gushing enthusiastically to Goldman Sachs...

She ran a shitty, arrogant campaign & lost. Need I go on?

BortBernie did everything in his power to persuade his faithful that they should never vote for Hillary no matter what.

Pillager is evidence of Bernie's handiwork. I'm sure he will say that he developed his hatred of Hillary all on his own, but he sure as hell buys into the "Hillary spoke to Goldman Sachs, therefore she is corrupt" logic failure that Bernie pushed.

BortEndorsed her feebly after convincing his gullible hordes she was corrupt and won only by cheating.

Oscar WildcatA majority of the people who most need to hear this message are unfortunately too poorly educated to understand it. If I could whisper into Bern's ear, I would suggest he pay much closer attention to Donald Trump's speech last night, as it was a masterwork in communicating with American proles. Unlike W, Don's had plenty of media experience, and whomever ghost wrote that speech is one heck of a writer.

I understood that Bernie was committed to going out to red state and trying to address the people directly. He needs some serious coaching in that regard. The former governor of Kentucky looks to be a much better candidate for the job. If you watched his response speech, you can see how these same ideas can be communicated to ordinary people. What Bernie is doing above is just word salad.

Bort"I understood that Bernie was committed to going out to red state and trying to address the people directly."

Bernie was never interested in doing the hard work of persuading people who disagreed with him. Too much pontificating, not enough listening. It's a skill he never really had to cultivate in Vermont, where people who think like him are in the majority.

Oscar WildcatThat may be true Bort, but Hillary Clinton was even worse at this than Bernie. Barack was a little better, but still (and this is why I liked the guy) when he opened up his mouth all kinds of words would come out that were incomprehensible to a majority of Americans. This is a real problem for the Democrats. I am not sure what it will take to fix, but I am glad the Clintons have lost control because what's coming seems to have a better grasp of this fact. This may be the responsibility of the Obama people. There was a sort of power struggle I understand and the Berners didn't get their man in? You'll have to tell me what's going on internally in the party.

BortAt least part of Hillary's appeal to minorities was that she went on listening tours. Not speaking tours where she'd give her stump speech, but listening tours where she would find out what minorities were looking for. That's why she knew about HBCU funding issues early in the game, for example.

There was a power struggle in the DNC recently, where two functionally interchangeable candidates were angling for the chair, and the winner ultimately made the loser his deputy co-chair. Bernie's fans were trying to relitigate the primary and make like the winner was an establishment tool of Wall Street despite his genuine labor cred, and he was corrupt for even bothering to run at all (rather than let the other guy simply be coronated). Loser would have done a fine job too, though if he wanted to make DNC chair his full time job (and he did), he would have needed to give up his seat in Congress, and I have a problem with that -- why risk any seats needlessly?

Jeriko-1Well, better than Hillary's tactic of reaching out and... Giving them the finger.

There was this idea in the DNC that demographics in swing states had shifted so much that Cletus's vote was no longer needed. That's what that whole Deplorables thing was, wasn't it? To let them know 'fuck you, we don't want or need your vote'? In a perfect world yes, this would have been fine to do. They would have finally realized their game was over, had been over for years and they could either adapt or rot as she took office.

Except it's not a perfect world, the Electoral College is a thing so you kind of HAVE to try and reach out to those swing state (poor white) people somehow.

namtarHillary "Bring them to Heel" Clinton certainly was a champion for minorities.

Maggot BrainIt's unfortunate that Hillary and the DNC ignored the rust belt states where Bernie gave Hillary a real run for her money. It's unfortunate that the system favors states certain size but that's just the way things go in America.

However, I'm going to agree with OW that this speech was a bit of a word salad. In the first minute Bernie brought three different topics. Bernie should have listen to Biden when he said "stay on message"

BortPillager, there's nobody here I take less seriously than you when it comes to empathy for minorities. You're also the first guy to denounce the Democrats' focus on "identity politics" at every turn (read: send blacks to the back of the bus, or under it if necessary).

Also, you're still going with "Shrillary" and "Goldwater girl"; don't you think you're part of the misogyny problem among Bernie's faithful?

Pillager@ Bort. No, I've merely developed a social allergy to social justice.

I'm all for all people having an equal shot at the American dream. I'm just sick of trying to please the literally unpleaseable.

Also, saying Killary has an unpleasant speaking voice & she's a DINO isn't misogynistic, it's a view that most people share.

Old_ZirconCounterpoint: Bernie almost won the primary despite starting his campaing about a year too late largely on strength of focusing on structural issues and policy (in the soundbite-freindly campaigning way, true, but still he ha a consistent, focused economic policy platform that was easy to communicate in a handful of words (which is unfortunately the only way it will get noticed).

If Clinton had even acknowledged policy instead of relying 100% on "Trump is an asshole"as her campaign platform then we would probably be in a much different situation today.

This speech I posted is very straightforward, a 12 year old could understand this and it speaks directly t the most immediate concerns of the vast majority of Americans. It's no coincidence that Trump co-opted as much of Bernie's rhetoric as he could after the primaries and he won where it mattered (in the states where those concerns are most acute).

Old_ZirconPillager, having "an equal shot at the American dream" is useless. Equality in access means nothing, it's equality in outcomes that matters (we're talking fundamental civil rights and economic justice here of course, not "we're all stars everyone gets a trophy just for participating" bullshit that is great for children but doesn't make sense in the larger social world). Otherwise it's no different than saying "anyone could grow up to be President" or "you can pull yourself out of poverty if you work hard and go to school" or "you could count every grain of sand on the beach if you just took the time."

It's the left-wing version of the bootstraps myth, and is really just a way to shift blame for oppressive sociopolitical structures onto the individual. If everyone has "equal opportunity" then if they fail to achieve it is implicitly their fault, and if it is their fault then I (and you) can comfortably ignore our own roles in an inherently oppressive, unequal system.

I think you might like this recent interview with Jessa Crispin, she really hits it out of the park in terms of how market forces, assimilation and over-reliance on relativistic thinking (among other things) has debased Feminism over the last two decades, and a lot of her insight is more widely applicable to the broader problems of social justice movements under neoliberal capitalism and what happens when they achieve enough success that they become a market demographic/career path. As someone who practically grew up on second wave Feminism and could never square what I understood the word to mean with what it started to represent sometime around the second Clinton term (like how the fuck is "more female CEOs" any kind of a victory, when CEOs are, by definition, central actors in a patriarchal economic system that inherently oppresses women and other disempowered demographics - a victory for women isn't equal participation in patriarchy, a victory for women - for PEOPLE - would be a world with fewer MALE CEOs, not more female ones... for example), I'm really looking forward to reading her new book, since it's basically a call for a return to Feminism's progressive, radically humanist roots.

http://tinyurl.com/zj3qkna

Bort"It's the left-wing version of the bootstraps myth, and is really just a way to shift blame for oppressive sociopolitical structures onto the individual."

This. I don't mind pushing for things like a $15 minimum wage (beyond technical concerns), but when you do so to the neglect of civil rights concerns -- and a great many Lefties want to do exactly that -- you reveal yourself as no different than the Teabaggers. I feel for people who are struggling to pay the rent, and I also feel for people who are afraid their kids will get shot like Trayvon Martin; in fact I say the latter have more pressing concerns.

Pillagerâ€śWhiteness is not humxness, in fact, white skin is sub-humxn,â€ť she wrote. â€śAll phenotypes exist within the black family and white ppl are a genetic defect of blackness.â€ť

She continued explaining her theory, claiming white people are lesser because â€ś[they] have a higher concentration of enzyme inhibitors that suppress melanin production. They are genetically deficient because melanin is present at the inception of life.â€ť

Lord_CrocodilicusThis guy is an embarrassing fence riding cuck. I'd rather have ACTUAL communists shove my balls up my ass with a white hot firepoker than have to watch this boring, half-assed Ben and Jerry loser go on with his disgraced existence any longer.

I mean I'm no fan of his either but I can't find any good reasons to hate him.

Lord_CrocodilicusLef, I have several special snowflake mental disorders, and probably have a few more. Do you even have a occipital bun? You disgust me with your judgement.

DQL, the way he just took it up the ass from the Dems was just shameful. He managed to look pretty bad standing across from fackin Ted Cruz just a couple weeks ago. He also attacked Martin Shkreli instinctively a year and a half ago without truly looking into the story. He's not brave.

BortEver have a coworker who doesn't do much work but has a chummy relationship with the boss and prospers by tearing other people down? That's Bernie. He's been in Congress since 1991 -- that's two years before the Clintons reached Washington -- and he has no accomplishments to his name, but he became the darling of the Left by complaining that the other Democrats aren't trying hard enough. Funny how he never took on a position of leadership in Congress, showing the Democrats how to get things done. You'd think he might do so just out of a desire to further progressive goals; sometimes you have to step up if nobody else is willing to.

The Taiwanese animators do a pretty good job of pointing out many things wrong with Bernie, including multiple examples of hypocrisy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGeMX8RvRbc

And while several of the things the Taiwanese animators are technically about Bernie's supporters rather than Bernie himself, Bernie made virtually no effort to rein them in. When they started issuing death threats after losing the Nevada caucus, Bernie responded with a four-page document with one sentence of perfunctory finger-wagging and the rest was justifying their grievances. It was something Sarah Palin might have done.

One other thing that I don't think anyone else has noticed: Bernie's revolutionary campaign finance technique is just a repackaging of the televangelist scam. Pump your supporters to keep sending you money for some cause that you know is fraudulent (as Bernie's campaign was as of Super Tuesday), and above all, keep them so worked up that they'll donate sums they can't afford. This from the guy who hates economic exploitation of the poor.

Spit SpingolaThought Bern did a good job here. I like him and think he might have beaten Trump had he beaten Hillary, but I wish he would become an official Democrat and cut the whole independent schtick.